What impact, if any, will Victoria’s WFH laws have on legal recruitment?

As reported by Lawyers Weekly’s sister brand, HR Leader, criticism has come thick and fast since the announcement, from the potential for myriad HR concerns, a likely increase in the volume of employment disputes, and therefore the workload for the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal, fears for negative impacts on business operations, and an acceleration of offshoring of jobs.

The latter point is especially pertinent: will employers look to recruit remote workers outside of Victoria if those in the state have mandated flexible arrangements anyway? More specific to this brand: could an unintended consequence of the legislative amendments be that Victorian lawyers’ jobs instead go to out-of-state practitioners?

Of course, the laws have not yet come into effect, and thus some of the impacts are not yet being felt. However, and to the extent that market sentiment is often a strong driver of economic activity, Lawyers Weekly reached out to recruiters across the profession to sense-check what’s happening on the ground.

Likely impact

Major, Lindsay & Africa’s managing director of in-house counsel recruiting and partner recruiting, Kate Olgers, and partner of in-house counsel recruiting, Olivia Seet, said they expect the legislative change to be “low impact” for the legal profession – except to the extent it generates demand for legal advice on how to manage the change, particularly from clients whose workforce is geographically dispersed.

Law was an early adopter of WFH, the pair said, including limited uptake prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, “because the nature of the work is well suited to it”.

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“With WFH arrangements now mainstream across the market, most law firms and corporate legal teams allow flexibility around a core of three days per week in the office,” they said.

“There may be a handful of corporate legal teams which benefit from the change because they sit in a business which does not currently accommodate WFH – but experience demonstrates the work will still get done with no negative impacts on the business nor need to look at alternative providers,” Olgers and Seet said.

Carlyle Kingswood Global’s head of in-house legal and governance, Phillip Hunter, added that his firm has seen “no shift” in recruitment activity across in-house legal and governance, either since the announcement or since the bill was introduced.

“No mandates have moved out of Victoria into New South Wales or Queensland, no roles have been reframed as national or offshore to sidestep it, and not one client has raised the legislation as a factor in a hiring decision,” he said.

Moreover, Olgers and Seet said, the change is “unlikely” to lead to an offshoring of Australian legal jobs.

“That ship has already sailed for process-driven work such as document review, contracting support, legal operations and parts of compliance, where the looming threat/opportunity is not Victoria, but AI,” they said.

“At the other end, senior in-house roles aren’t going offshore – they exist because someone needs to be close to the management team and the local regulator.”

Evolving perceptions of employers of choice

Jesse Shah, nrol founder, also believes there won’t be an immediate wave of offshoring, nor firms or lawyers leaving Victoria, given the legal profession’s successful embrace of hybrid working arrangements. Where there may be an impact, he said, is in talent retention.

“Firms that remain flexible are likely to have an advantage in recruiting experienced lawyers, particularly those with family commitments or long commutes. The bigger question is whether legislating flexibility reduces employers’ ability to differentiate. In a competitive legal market, flexibility has become part of the employee value proposition,” Shah said.

“If it becomes the baseline, firms will need to compete harder on culture, career progression and remuneration instead.”

G2 Legal Australian director Daniel Stirling agreed, noting that hybrid working arrangements are enjoyed by most lawyers nationwide, while there are some employers that have increased the number of compulsory days in the office.

“If Victoria does lock in a two-day WFH minimum, then this could make it a desirable destination for lawyers looking to enjoy this benefit,” he said.

“The challenge will then be for legal teams to ensure that this flexibility doesn’t impact productivity and that junior lawyers are still provided with the right supervision and learning opportunities.”

Other comments

Another point of interest, Hunter noted, is the mechanism through which the entitlement is being provided.

“Locating the right in the Equal Opportunity Act, rather than industrial legislation, moves refusals into a discrimination framework, which is a different exposure profile for employers and a different evidentiary burden,” he said.

“The work for in-house teams is in policy drafting and documenting the reasoning behind a refusal, not redesigning the operating model.”

The live variable, he said, is durability: “Commencement lands two months before a state election, the business lobby is pushing hard for withdrawal, and I would not be surprised to see the settings revisited. The market is not pricing that in yet.”

Ultimately, Stirling said he understands why the looming legislative changes are concerning for certain businesses and industries, where productivity could be affected.

However, he said he believes that the legal profession “could be one to benefit from this, as hybrid working between home and the office is sought after by the majority of legal job applicants”.

“It is also a profession where productivity shouldn’t be affected if proper management and systems are in place,” he said.

To this end, Hunter said that a two-day mandate “is not a material issue” for high-performing legal and governance operators.

“That cohort has worked flexibly for five years, and most in-house teams already sit at or beyond two days, so the bill largely codifies existing practice,” he said.